Panettone | Mistakes to avoid

Italian Christmas brioche, mistakes to avoid
Authentic Italian recipe

Panettone isn't easy to do if you want to get the authentic recipe. You have to respect a lot of conditions from rising to temperature.
The ingredients are to be chosen carefully. Finally you must be patient, very patient. So panettone has been a challenge for me because I'm always stimulated by difficulties. I did a lot of experiments, creating three recipes and accumulating a lot of experience.
Here are my tips, based on my experience to avoid the most common mistakes. Interested in my recipes? Panettone with sourdough, panettone with fresh yeast, emmer panettone, Italian cakes and desserts.

Kneading Italian panettone

Handmade panettone: mistakes to avoid

Premise

- It isn't easy to make panettone at home.
Beware of those who tell you that it's easy.
It is a long recipe that requires not only time but also a lot of patience and a careful monitoring of several factors.
As long as you want to do the panettone cake and not just a long-rising sweet with raisins and candied fruit:
they are two different cakes.

- Secondly, homemade panettone is different from that you buy.
The flavor is a bit different, but very tasty according to me and my husband and all our guests who have tasted the variants of my panettone.

- Then homemade panettone has a different texture of its dough compared to the industrial product.
Bubbles, a sign of the rising, are smaller and equally distributed in the dough.
In addition, the top will surely be crisper.
And finally it will have a less evident dome ;)))

- In conclusion, the decision to make panettone at home should not start from the idea of ??saving - in fact, you can also spend more - but rather from the desire to truly enter into the magical atmosphere of Christmas involving all the members of your family and especially your children.
And then there is the fascination of the challenge to succeed in something complicated.
And the possibility, not indifferent, to choose all ingredients making an organic cake.

Common mistakes

- The authentic panettone is made with sourdough, not with fresh yeast.
Otherwise you could get a cake with a too acidic aftertaste, especially when fresh yeast is used in great quantity to improve the rising.
But on the site you will find both recipes because for many reasons there are a lot of people who can't make panettone with sourdough.
My panettone recipe with fresh yeast is characterized by various risings with increasing amounts of flour. So I can use little fresh yeast but times are longer.

- Another important factor is the temperature for every rising.
Follow carefully every suggestion in this sense that you can find on the various recipes.
To make panettone it isn't enough the temperature that we have in our homes.

Little or nothing can be enough to have a cake like what you can see to your right (third photo). Not only the dough has not been raised in a uniform manner but the leavening has not been sufficient. Nice hole right?
This is one of many attempts of mine before being successful with emmer panettone.

- On the contrary it may sometimes happen the rising is very well, too well and panettone grows too much, with all the consequences. In the case of our photo (the first to your right) rose over the edge of the mold but it sat down next (third to your right). Have you seen? So I learnt panettone must be placed in the oven when its dome has reached the limit of the mold.
I also realized that I had to put a little dough into the mold. Look at the picture that we included in the page dedicated to panettone with sourdough to get an idea of how much dough should be placed in the mold for the final leavening. And, if you look closely, the dough has already the dome shape.

- Speaking of rising I avoid to cut a cross on panettone surface just before baking. Two times on three I cause very serious problems to the rise because my dough is soft and this cut may lowers my cake abruptly. Look how pretty sweet with a flat surface I got once! (fourth photo to your right). Fortunately, it tasted fantastic and although he had amassed in its center my husband and I ate it in spite of everything.

- Another tip. Pay attention to the temperature of your oven. It is easy the top color too much when the inside is not cooked yet. Follow carefully my tips in every recipe.

- Panettone is a low-rising cake whose sweet taste comes from candied fruit and raisins more than its dough. So don't increase sugar quantity in the dough.

- Italian panettone has not a white dough but turning to pale yellow for the abundance of eggs. So choose good-quality eggs for the best result.